AADE is launching sweeping audits at all levels of e-commerce, putting marketplaces, e-shops, and food and coffee delivery platforms under the microscope. For the first time, inspectors are deploying artificial intelligence to cross-check in real time bank transactions, courier deliveries, and platform data against what businesses declare in myDATA. The aim is to uncover those who continue to pocket VAT, collect payments, and deliver products or meals without issuing legal receipts.

AADE’s special audit team has created a new operational database where all digital transaction footprints “fit”: from electronic card and bank payments to courier shipping slips and platform data. Algorithms scan purchases, VAT declarations, turnover, and income, comparing them with deliveries and electronic payments. In this way, the gaps left by businesses that fail to declare everything to the tax office are revealed.

Particular focus is on the circulation of low-value products and food, where tax evasion thrives. A customer orders a coffee or a sandwich through an app, pays by card or cash on delivery, but instead of a receipt, receives only an order slip. The business has collected VAT but never pays it. In fact, many shopkeepers send later – sometimes days afterward – a rough paper note or an “invoice” via email, which is not a legal receipt.

The case of cash on delivery is an even bigger “loophole.” The customer pays the courier in cash, and the money passes “by hand,” leaving no electronic trace. Thus, tax evasion becomes almost unchecked, since the business can completely avoid recording the transaction. In these cases, the courier is limited to presenting a shipping slip, without bearing any responsibility for whether the entrepreneur issued a receipt.

Even more glaring are the cases of businesses that sell products online without ever having registered in the tax registry. In practice, they operate parasitically, without any business status, creating conditions of unfair competition against professionals who comply with their obligations.

According to the operational program, AADE will collect data from well-known marketplaces and food delivery platforms and compare it with what business owners declare in myDATA. The process will not, of course, concern private individuals selling personal items occasionally but targets those essentially engaging in business activity without issuing receipts. In the next stage, the tax office plans to tighten the net further with a new generation of cash registers, which will be automatically linked to POS systems and will send their data directly to AADE.

The battle is not only domestic. The tax administration will also carry out joint audits with other European countries, exchanging data to identify cross-border cases of tax evasion. As Authority officials stress, the days when online sales operated in “gray zones” are over. Platforms are now obliged to send AADE the transaction data of their users. Those who do not cooperate risk massive fines of up to €500,000 and even suspension of operations. Users themselves, if they refuse to declare their details, will see their accounts blocked and payments withheld by the tax office.

AADE officials express confidence that the new web of controls and the use of modern tools will close the last windows of tax evasion. “Even those who believe they can escape now know that the audit mechanism has all the data to track them down,” they note pointedly.

The picture is clear: e-commerce, which has boomed in recent years, can no longer operate under outdated rules. From the coffee delivered without a receipt to the e-shop selling dozens of products via cash on delivery, everything now passes under AADE’s lens. And the message is clear: those who continue to break the law will face devastating fines and the possibility of shutdown.